other matters, and congratulating him that he had not been misled by the Whitman legend, after thanking me for my corrections, wrote:
Having been a professional student of American history from original sources for twenty years, I did not need to be warned against such a fake as the Whitman saved Oregon fable, which I am every now and then entreated to insert.
Principal W. F. Gordy wrote me early in the summer of 1899:
I am entirely satisfied of the correctness of your position, and that you are doing a great work for the truth of history. * * * The next edition of my school history will not contain the name of Marcus Whitman.
And the edition whose preface is dated September, 1899, does not.
Mrs. A. H. Burton wrote me on October 20, 1900, as follows:
I shall hereafter exercise more care in my methods from having observed the inexhaustible patience exercised by you in sifting out the truth. I have ordered the elimination of the name of Whitman from my history.
Though Prof. John Fiske had never mentioned Whitman in his books, I knew that he had in an address at Astoria, in 1892, and therefore sent him the same manuscripts as Principal Gordy, and on July 26, 1900, he wrote me as follows:
I have read the greater part of your manuscripts with care, and it seems to me that you have completely proved your case. You have entirely demolished the Whitman delusion, and by so doing have made yourself a public benefactor. I am sorry to say that I was taken in by Barrows and Gray, and supposed what they said about Whitman to be true. In 1892 I was invited to deliver the centennial oration at Astoria in commemoration of the discovery of the Columbia River. My acquaintance with the history of Oregon was then but slight. I was familiar with the history of American discovery along our northwest coast, having studied that subject in the original sources, so that part of my oration was all right; but when I came to the events of fifty years ago, having no first-hand acquaintance with the sources, I trusted to Barrows and Gray, and accordingly gave my audience a dose of Whitman. Among my audience was Judge Deady, who afterwards informed me that all that I said about Whitman was wrong. There were others who contradicted the Judge and maintained that I was right. I now see, however, that the Judge was right. I feel personally grateful to you for the light you have thrown upon the subject, and I am very glad that I never printed anything about the Whitman business. That, however, I should not have been likely to do without further examination of sources. You have done your work so thoroughly that it will not need to be done again.
